Wall Street lines up for profit parade close-up

One by one, 116 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index will join the profit parade on Wall Street this week, a five-day earnings confessional that could propel the stock market to more gains and year-end rally or snuff out optimism if a drumbeat of profit misses piles up. The Dow Jones industrial average is riding a three-week winning streak, as a lot of the gloom that pervaded over stocks in the summer has given way to some bullishness amid signs the Federal Reserve will hold off on interest rate hikes until 2016.

Wall Street will get a big dose of earnings reports from companies that sell discretionary goods to consumers, tech firms that sell services and high-tech gadgets, as well as big industrial companies. So far the bulk of companies that have reported earnings have topped very low estimates. Through midday Friday, 71% of the 58 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings have topped expectations, above the 63% long-term beat rate, according to Thomson Reuters.

But earnings are still forecast to contract in the third-quarter, although the current -3.9% projection tops the -4.2% forecast on Oct. 1. Many of America’s best-known firms will report earnings. Today, investment firm Morgan Stanley (MS), tech giant IBM (IBM) and oil services play Halliburton (HAL) report.